Monday, 9 July 2012

Rastan's Al-Farouq Brigades Show Off Their Latest Loot - Tanks

This rather interesting video from Rastan, Homs has been posted on Youtube and shows the Al-Farouq Brigades showing off the weapons and equipment they've captured from the Syrian Army

The video starts with around 50 men armed with what appears to be the usual variety of FSA small arms watching a T-62 tank being driven past, followed by the increasingly ubiquitous truck mounted DShK heavy machine gun, the current popular choice for firing at helicopters. What's quite interesting is many of the men are wearing the same dark green shirts, with some sort of logo, probably their brigade logo

That's not something I've really seen before in Syria, but certainly worth keeping an eye out for in the future. The next part of the video shows the same group of men now stood with 3 T-62 tanks, and one armoured car

In the last picture you can again see green shirts with logos worn by some of the men, so it does appear they've developed their own uniform, suggesting an organised brigade of regulars. There's obviously reasonable questions about whether or not the two tanks in the later part of the video are functioning as we only see one in action, and there's no way to know how much actual tank ammo they have, but it does demonstrate that in Rastan the FSA are stockpiling armoured vehicles, which will make life even harder for the Syrian army.
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